While most readers were checking up on The Detroit Free Press or The New York Times, Dave and Sue Raeck were avid subscribers to a small yet sophisticated publication creatively titled, The Raeck News. Each week, their over-excited fourth grader would tap away on the family computer, composing a three-page newspaper, elegantly pressed on a desktop printer and distributed throughout the home. The Raeck News not only told the people what they wanted to hear, but it told them what they needed to hear, with crayon-doodled political cartoons and opinion articles regarding household chores among the mix. When questioned why she chose to interview her mother on the upcoming presidential election instead of playing outside, the author of this publication could not form an answer. She didn’t know why she wrote, exactly, but the excitement and eagerness that resulted from handing her father the first copy of a week’s paper fueled her drive. Later, reflecting on these early experiences, the author finally realized that this near obsessive attachment to the written word at a young age was when she first fell in love with the act of writing.
Through the years, numerous writing endeavors ensued, including a short story about the cardiovascular system narrated by Rudy the red blood cell, a thick screenplay for a pirate movie, and a construction-paper children’s book that attempted to illustrate the aspect of interracial identity through the perspective of a spork. These early years were the renaissance of her writing life, and the young author channeled every imaginative thought. At home, composing purely for herself, writing was colorful, with swirls and layers, like sections of an orchestra, all meshing together to express an abstract idea that may not even make sense to anyone but herself. It was a painting, utilizing all of the colors on the palette, greens coming together with reds and sometimes making a brown mess. But this mess was okay because nobody else had to see it. It was her mess. She loved her failures just as much as she loved her victories. She loved all of her writing.
In school, however, writing was different. In middle school, when she was first introduced to the infamous “Five Paragraph Essay,” the young author suddenly felt the need to fit her writing into an intangible box. To please her teachers and earn that sacred “A,” she silenced the symphony, cleaned off the canvas, and wrote in black and white, one layer at a time. Though disappointed, she was not fazed because, to her, this was not actual writing. This was a game of fill-in-the-blank, read, rearrange, and regurgitate. She typed a somewhat witty but not overly abstract opening sentence. She typed an elaborate thesis statement at the bottom of the introduction paragraph. She typed Idea 1, Idea 2, and Idea 3. She typed a summary of these three ideas, forming the conclusion. She typed what the teacher wanted to hear, words that would get her good grades. But she never wrote.
One day her sixth grade teacher announced a new essay assignment. The prompt was to write about two inspirational figures, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez, and explain “how they displayed courage in their daily lives.” The young author’s head did not perk up until she heard the magic word: “competition.” Her teacher explained how students in schools across the state would be writing the same essay, and the winners would be published in Lansing’s daily newspaper, awarded a savings bond, and given the opportunity to have dinner with the governor. The last two parts of the prize did not excite her. At ten years old, she was not comprehending the idea of attending college, nor was she comprehending how much that would eventually cost her. She did not care whether or not she got to shake the clammy hand of a woman in a dress suit, whom she did not know. What really excited her about the assignment was the chance to achieve her dream: to be published.
After a while, she knew she was destined for bigger things than The Raeck News, as elite of a production as it was. So, the young writer set forth to do whatever it took to win the essay contest. Sitting at the kitchen table, armed with her history book, a light-up pen, and a Hello Kitty notepad, she took notes. She brainstormed. She outlined. Though she was not aware what these formal steps in the writing process really were, she slaved to create a paper that would please her teacher and, hopefully, please the contest judges. However, to do so, she had to write in her imaginary box. Each paragraph was a completely separate idea, sitting on the page like islands. Her introductory sentence was irritatingly catchy, her thesis was as clear as crystal, and her conclusion was sure to repeat the main points brought up throughout the paper. She knew it wasn’t art, but it was what her teacher would want. Content, she submitted the finished product.
Over time, the writer heard back about her essay. Her teacher congratulated her on getting second place in the contest. Though this was enough to boost her young ego, and possibly inspire her to continue writing later on in life, her competitive mindset turned back on and she immediately wondered: why not first place? She was curious to see what the contest’s winner had possibly done to outshine her weeks of focused, perfectly organized work.
That Sunday, she woke up early. She met the newspaper delivery van at the driveway, barefoot and in pink, polka-dotted pajamas. Careful not to rip or fold its delicate pages, she unrolled the copy of The Lansing State Journal and sifted forward to the Editorial page. There it was: “By Allison Raeck.” That phrase, in itself, was the reward. Printed in a tiny, serif font, those three words inspired a journey that would never end. Once she first saw her name in a mainstream publication, attached to something of which she could take full ownership and call her own, she knew she would see it again. And again. And again. The pride was too good to pass up. She would become a writer.
Still, this newly motivated individual wondered what had taken the contest’s top prize. It was a piece by a girl from another school, half the length of her own. She was shocked. She thought that if her paper was longer, it had to be better. Thoroughly confused, she read. This piece was nothing like what she wrote at school. There were not five paragraphs. There were sentence fragments littered across the page. The essay’s author even had the guts to write in first person. To the young author reading this piece, everything was against the rules. And yet, she could tell, it was from the heart. There was a story. It was creative. It was a winner. But still, to her, it was completely illegal.
Though she knew it felt wrong, she did not let go of the traditional essay structure. Through countless book analyses and awkward college application statements, this black and white method served her well. It was not until she entered her freshman year of college that an individual finally told her what she had been waiting all those years to hear: the five-paragraph essay was crap. As her first year English instructor backed up this claim, the symphony faded back into the author’s mind. Staring at her computer screen, she no longer saw just a blinking black line in a sea of white; she saw the colors. She heard the layers of the music in her head, her first argument meshing with the counterpoint, a crescendo leading up to an overarching climax, eventually twisting the song into a new key which would become a piece much deeper than any reader would expect. Suddenly, writing for school was enjoyable.
Looking back, however, the author cannot regret the days spent writing “in the box.” Sure, overly organized pieces were boring to construct and seemed incredibly mundane to the reader. Still, however, these assignments taught her how to formulate a clear argument and how to sort various ideas. Artistic freedom is not acceptable in every assignment in school, nor is it always acceptable in life. In the future, she knows that she will be required to do things traditionally, inside of the box. What she has learned is how to approach this requirement. Though she may be forced to write to fit a norm, the author always attempts to let a little color into each piece, a tribute to the imagination and unmitigated love that has always inspired her to write.
Why I’ve Always Written, Why I Write, and Why I Will Write
self-reflection
This piece is a self-reflection I wrote during my sophomore year for Writing 300: Seminar in Peer Tutoring. I took the course as part of training to become a peer writing consultant at the Sweetland Center for Writing. I came into the class without many expectations, assuming that we might learn a few grammar rules to better edit students’ papers.
Immediately, I found my writing perspective turned upside-down. Following Sweetland’s mission, I learned that writing is not a skill to be taught, but an inherent ability and medium for expressing thoughts, opinions, and emotions. I studied strategies for not only helping students with their specific papers, but helping them find themselves as writers and really speak through the written word. Suddenly, I found that there was no "correct" voice that I had to emulate in my writing, and that I should always implement a bit of inquiry in my pieces. I thought deeper. I questioned. I escaped “the box.”
With this freeing mindset, I wrote this reflection from the third-person point of view. Hesitating, I wasn’t sure how I would complete a self-reflection from the perspective of an omniscient third party. It seemed so counter-intuitive. But since I was focusing on the topic of “why I write” and, more specifically, how I had learned to take writing risks up to that point, I thought it would be appropriate to do something unconventional through this perspective, to present the topic of innovative writing through innovative writing.
Though this piece directly cites my first-year college English course as the time when I broke out of the five-paragraph essay and actually thought for myself through writing, looking back now, I see that this piece was the true cause of my epiphany. Not only did I have the chance to first merge creative writing and an academic assignment, but reflecting on the incredibly broad topic of “why I write” inspired me to re-evaluate the importance of writing in my life. As the piece states, I had always had an attraction to the act of writing, especially seeing my name in a publication. But it was not until I wrote this piece that I actually began to seriously consider the potential to make a career out of it. I had been told time and time again that I should major in something safe and reliable, something that would be sure to land a high-paying career. At the point when I wrote this piece, I was still struggling with my life plans and deciding what path I wanted to take. Reflecting on how far writing had taken me over the years and answering that one question, “why I write,” helped me to realize that I needed to follow the path that I had been walking my entire life, and that I needed to pursue writing.